The WUWT Hot Sheet for Monday October 7th, 2013

It’s the beginning of the end. Watch the Giant with Feet of Clay crumble. A train wreck in slow motion. There’s more sense being said about AR5 than would have been imaginable eighteen months ago when drafts were available. In fact some of the media coverage (e.g. Newsnight) has been jaw-droppingly almost balanced in both invited participants and the line of questioning.

As the CAGW frenzy whipped up by the overstatement of zealous believers and compliant shut down of debate in the media was increasingly untenable, reasoned debate has begun to happen and the imperative ‘need’ to blog melted away.

The IPCC has a very bad case of confusing the probability inside their argument with the probability of the question as a whole (e.g. 20th century attribution, 21st century projections, climate sensitivity). Dangerous anthropogenic global warming is one possible scenario of the future; there are many other possible scenarios that the IPCC completely ignores (heck, we cant predict solar variations, volcanic eruptions, and natural internal variability so we might as well ignore them).

A WINDFARM has been ordered to demolish ten turbines and pay compensation and fines after it was successfully sued by a couple.

Speaking to Le Figaro newspaper, the couple’s lawyer, Philippe Bodereau, said: “This decision is very important because it demonstrates to all those who put up with windfarms with a feeling of powerlessness that the battle is not in vain, even against big groups, or authorities who deliver building permits, that legal options are available to everyone, that we have a right to live in peace and that people can do other things than suffer.”

The couple bought their 18th century listed property, the Château de Flers, in 1993.

A tribunal in Montpellier ruled that the couple had suffered due to the “degradation of the environment, resulting from a rupture of a bucolic landscape and countryside”. It also agreed the couple had suffered from the noise of the turbines and from the flashing lights.

Scientists have discovered huge ice channels beneath a floating ice shelf in Antarctica. At 250 meters high, the channels are almost as tall as the Eiffel tower and stretch hundreds of kilometers along the ice shelf. The channels are likely to influence the stability of the ice shelf and their discovery will help researchers understand how the ice will respond to changing environmental conditions.

Christopher Booker: Climate Scientists Are Just Another Pressure Group

The IPCC and its reports have been shaped by a close-knit group of scientists, all dedicated to the cause

Last weekend, something very odd happened. On Friday we were told that in Stockholm the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC) had published a report saying that it was now “extremely likely” that the world faces disastrous man-made climate change. But this was merely a “summary” for politicians and the media of a scientific report that was not published until three days later.

We then learnt that this “Summary for Policymakers” had been argued over for days and sleepless nights by hundreds of politicians, officials and scientists, but, weirdly, that the scientific report it supposedly summarised had subsequently been amended to bring it into line with the summary. One obvious change from previous drafts was the marked downplaying of any reference to how, in recent years, global temperatures have so notably failed to rise as the IPCC’s computer models predicted.

This was an uncanny replay of the first scandal to hit the IPCC back in 1996, when again the “summary” thrashed over by politicians and a few key scientists was made more alarming than the report proper by inserting a claim that there was now “a discernible human influence” on the world’s climate.

Scientists who had approved the report protested that there was nothing in their text to justify this. But, to their amazement, they discovered that their agreed version had been amended to include this very phrase, citing as its authority two papers not yet published by Ben Santer, an American scientist who had also played a key part in drafting the summary.

All this, and the revelation that Santer had deleted 15 passages casting doubt on man-made warming from the agreed text, famously prompted Prof Frederick Seitz, a revered former president of the US National Academy of Sciences, to protest that never in 60 years as a scientist had he “witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process”. Last weekend Dr Santer was again playing a part in the events that led to a virtual repeat of what happened in 1995.

A Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group has sued the University of Arizona demanding the release of a cache of documents — including two professors’ emails — related to climate change and global warming.

The Energy and Environment Legal Institute, which until recently was known as the American Tradition Institute, first requested the documents in December 2011. It sued in Pima County Superior Court in September, after the university released some of the documents, but withheld most on what the institute considers questionable grounds.

“The taxpayer is paying for this in many ways,” said Christopher C. Horner, a Virginia-based attorney for the organization.

Horner said the public is entitled to see the emails because employees of the state university system created them as part of their official duties, and they remain stored on publicly funded computers.

UA Professors Malcolm Hughes, of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, and Jonathan Overpeck, with the department of geosciences and the department of Atmospheric sciences, wrote the emails. They were sent to other academics across the country and in Europe, and to organizations such as the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The Oceans are Not More Acidic Now Than in the Past 300 Million Years
Posted on October 6, 2013
… despite what the Guardian says.

Fiona Harvey’s article in the Guardian on 3 October 2013 Ocean acidification due to carbon emissions is at highest for 300m years misrepresents the scientific literature. This error has propagated across the Twittersphere.

“……..In fact the references make clear that the oceans are currently MORE alkaline than in almost all of the past 300 million years……….”

16 thoughts on “The WUWT Hot Sheet for Monday October 7th, 2013”

I find it interesting that aging ‘celebrities’ are so easily recruited to say idiotic things about climate in exchange for headlines. It is sort of like getting a cameo on Murder She Wrote, except those old stars had actually talent and did not believe the plot true.

I hope 61 year-old Geldof isn’t extinct himself in 15 years, so that others alive then can ask him what happened to save humanity, including his four strangely-named daughters, from his dire prediction. His dad died at 96, but his mom at 41, so who knows?

“People 1 wind turbines 0 – Couple win wind turbine ruling”
I am waiting for someone who has legal standing here in Pennsylvania to sue over the HUGE wind farms being erected in the northern Pocono Mountains (and elsewhere). According to the Pennsylvania constitution and founding legislation for most environmental laws in the state, Pennsylvanians are constitutionally assured open and scenic vistas. I don’t live near any of these eyesores so I can’t file a complaint. Otherwise I would file immediately, as it is not even a questionable matter as to whether I had grounds to file. Any Pennsylvanians out there who is annoyed by the grand BP (i.e, federal government subsidized) wind farms. step up and be heard.

Live Aid’s greatest positive impact was to raise the awareness of the poverty in Africa and how much the continent was falling behind the developed world. Pre-internet – a world of fewer TV channels – such ignorance was inevitable.
Live Aid’s second greatest positive impact was to inspire people that they could make a difference.

Whether they were right at that time or not is open to debate.
But sooner or later one of those inspired people will make the difference.

I wonder how many of the incriminating emails still exist. Overpeck may have been able to delete his “We need to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period” message to Deming. Don’t know UA policy on emails sent from work computers, but if the most important temperature data can be “lost”, as at UEA, then why not old emails? Public universities, such as UVA, are supposed to keep emails, but then government supported researchers, like Lonnie & Mrs. Thompson, are supposed to archive their data, too.

I think I see why Anthony wanted to do this “Hot Sheet”.
I thought it was going to be “just” a collection of stories of interest. But it also connects to some of the not as famous blogs that have been in there faithfully slugging away and doing their part.
Share the wealth.

I think I see why Anthony wanted to do this “Hot Sheet”.
I thought it was going to be “just” a collection of stories of interest. But it also connects to some of the not as famous blogs that have been in there faithfully slugging away and doing their part.
Share the wealth.

Along the lines of sharing the wealth, it would be nice if there were a weekly round-up of the best threads on the less-famous blogs, akin the the SEPP’s weekly round-up of stories in the media and studies. It could be compiled by a panel of contrarians selected by Anthony.

I hope you’ll be pleased to hear that the headline and first paragraph of the Guardian article on ocean pH have now been changed following email correspondence between Fiona Harvey and me. Credit to Fiona and the Guardian for this response which now means that the article agrees with the cited report. The links in my post now lead to the updated version of the Guardian article which can be compared with the screenshot of the original in my post.